“I’m quietly tenacious.” – Steve Zeller

My guest in this episode was Steve Zeller – a friend I met about four years ago when he and I worked together on a data center project at Donaldson Company. Besides being the Global Facilities Director at Donaldson, Steve is the founder and owner of Parley Lake Winery in Waconia Minnesota. My co-host is one of my oldest and best friends – Paul Kibbe. Paul and I started working together at the same company 28 years ago and we hit it off right away because as you’ll see, he has a great sense of humor.

In this episode we cover a lot of great topics including:

the difference between making wine and making beer

the University of Minnesota mafia (my words not Steve’s)

why “screw caps verses corks” was the toughest decision he’s had to make for the winery

and what happens to the juice from the grape stomping competitions that they have at the winery

We also talk about “ladybug taint” and what Steve would do if he had three arms.

As always, the podcast has bonus material not shown in the public access show and in this episode there are extra lightning round questions.

Please enjoy

PS. If you get a chance, leave some feedback in the comments below.

Listen to Episode #6: Steve Zeller and Paul Kibbe – The Art of Making and Selling Wine | The Extraordinary Friends Show

“Most things I do end up being the hard way.” – Roman Fraulini

My guest for this episode is my good friend Roman Fraulini. He’s a Director of IT but don’t worry – we don’t spend any time talking about his day job. Instead we talk about his life experiences outside of IT.

They include:

growing up in a REALLY small Northern Minnesota town

joining the Air Force

how the Air Force influences his management style and his personal life

what it’s like to be a father having grown up without a father

and his Italian citizenship

For me Roman is part Andrew Zimmern, part Glengarry Glen Ross, part Zagat’s travel guide, part Cliff Clavin , and part Bear Grylls. But my favorite thing about Roman is that he will always play along with any absurd conversation that I start. He’ll join in without missing a beat, and he is never the first to break character and start laughing, no matter how absurd it gets. You get a small glimpse of that in the very beginning of the show when I ask him about where he’s from.

My co-host for this episode is Norris Stenson, a great friend I’ve known for almost 30 years. If I’m going to a party and I know Norris is going to be there, he’s the guy that I’m looking forward to seeing most because he’s a great conversationalist and always adds good humor to any situation.

If you only have 5 minutes go minute mark 43 to hear Roman’s story about the German maid.

As always, the podcast has bonus material at the very end including extra lightning round questions, and some funny pre-show conversations that are not in the video.

Enjoy!

PS. If you get a chance, leave some feedback in the comments below.

Listen to Episode #5: Roman Fraulini and Norris Stenson – “There’s no crying in business” | The Extraordinary Friends Show

“Well, that’s probably the person I’m not saving.” – Jason Ostrowski

My guest for this episode is Jason Ostrowski – a flight attendant for a regional carrier here in the Twin Cities. My co-host is Erik Swanson – my oldest (meaning we’ve known each other the longest) and also my best friend. Erik and I asked Jason all sorts of questions about flying and being a flight attendant including:

Who are the most annoying types of passengers?

What happens when a person dies on a plane during a flight?

What is the procedure when passengers are caught in the act?

Jason and Erik are a couple of great guys and we had a really fun conversation.

Here’s the video of the show, but I should tell you, the podcast has an additional 10 minutes of Lightning Round questions and pre-show outtakes.

My guest for this episode is Paul Blomkalns – a Nurse Practitioner and a really great guy who I met through my good friend David Bryan. Both these guys are a lot of fun to hang out with and tell great stories. But both were quite reserved for the first part of the conversation which really surprised me. I hadn’t expected them to be so professional and take my little talk show so seriously. But after lobbing several ridiculous questions at Paul they eventually relaxed and we had a great conversation.

Our topics mostly centered around what it’s like to be a nurse practitioner and included things like:

What is the grossest thing Paul’s ever seen

Who make better patients – men or women

And what he does when he’s propositioned by cougars

I have to apologize for the video and sound quality in this episode. We recorded this episode at my cabin on a beautiful July day, and I apparently set up the camera wrong so the whole episode is slightly out of focus. Plus there’s background sounds through out, and then near the end I start getting pinged on my phone because we were late for a floating happy hour.

If you only have five minutes, skip to minute mark 44 where Paul tells a story about how he almost kills himself while duck hunting alone.

Enjoy!

PS. If you get a chance, leave some feedback in the comments below.

Listen to Episode #3: Paul Blomkalns and David Bryan – Dates with Cadavers | The Extraordinary Friends Show

In this episode my friend, Matt Beukelman, and I talk with our good friends Jill Strickland and Grace Nxx about what it’s like to be black women in America. As you see in the Show Notes below, we cover all sorts of interesting topics including:

The extraordinary lengths that black women go to for their hair

What it’s like to work in predominantly white and predominately male company

Why you should never ask a person “where they learned their English.”

How few available/eligible men there are for black women

Plus we talk about how I became the “3rd blackest white guy in IT”.

And if you only have 5 minutes – jump to minute mark 32:10 in the YouTube video or 33:30 on the podcast to hear Jill’s story about the time she caused “all hell to break out” in her high school cafeteria.

Here’s a fun little time lapsed video of the setup for the very first show with Steven Meade and Chris Alme as guests. My good friend, Paul Kibbe, showed up to help me out. He learned to be a cameraman and a sound guy in less than an hour, and he did a fantastic job.